15. Picking Up the Group.

  Philip, who often liked to be called by his screen name MrGreen, was profoundly grateful for the free attempts on the obstacle course. He admitted that he hadn’t utilized as much of the free time as he should have, despite knowing that it was limited. He confessed that he hadn’t realized that fifty copper per hour was actually fairly expensive while you were simultaneously trying to outfit yourself properly to begin adventuring. Which was used synonymously with exploring, dungeoning, delving, partying, and a dozen other verbs. Even once you had your gear, potions and buff items were a constant drain on a burgeoning adventurer, he explained.

  MrGreen turned green with envy when Lewis explained that they’d gotten ten times the normal amount from me as their [Greeter].

  “Oh man, you guys really don’t know how lucky you are,” he said, shaking his head. “You got the literal maximum of greeter cash! That shit doesn’t ever count against you, and you can spend it on anything!”

  “I don’t get it,” Rick complained. “What’s the difference between that and, say, if he just gave us the same amount today?”

  MrGreen sighed and scratched his head as we watched Sophie get further on the obstacle course than anyone else had so far except for Greenie himself. “So, after the whole thing with NinjaGuardians, they put a bunch of rules into place about gifts that newbs like us can receive from accounts with more than a thousand subjective hours on them. The greater the difference between two accounts play time, the more complicated the rules become. If someone with one thousand thirty hours gave us a few gold, that’s not a big deal, but it might make it harder for us to generate money on our own for a few days. But if the person has like ten thousand hours, then it might shut down certain questlines, or lower the droprate on [rare] items for a while, or something.”

  “So, wait, if we accept the wrong sort of gift it can hurt us?” Lewis asked.

  “No,” I said quickly. “If you accept a gift that will affect your account, you receive a popup notifying you of that effect. You can either choose to accept the gift as it is, and have your account affected, or you can choose to have the gift ‘adjusted’ to one that would be appropriate. So if I tried to give you a thousand gold, it might inform you that your rare reagent gathering rate will be affected for a certain duration. Or you can have the gift adjusted down to five hundred gold, and nothing happens to your account, but I still have to pay a thousand gold. It’s a balance mechanism. Honestly, I don’t really get it, I just try to keep all of my gifts under the legal limit, you know?”

  “But when a pro like [Luke] gives away stuff as a [Greeter], it never counts against you. Did any of you get anything else?”

  “I gave someone else a dagger. A nice one. But the only reason I could was because we had a language barrier. And there was a crafting lady who I smuggled some nice tools to. She’ll be using those for five hundred hours or more before she’ll manage to replace them, although I don’t know if she realizes that yet.”

  “Oh, I do,” A new voice came from behind us. “I stepped in and we synced up a moment ago, but I was waiting for a good chance to say thank you.”

  “You’re quite welcome,” I said. “I like giving people things. Good tools like those are easy for me to come by because I can make them from scraps, but they’re hard for a player to get until they have a few hundred hours in.”

  “I know. I talked to a friend yesterday and she told me how lucky I was. If you are looking for more, she and I might be interested in joining you as … ‘PUGs’ is the term, right?”

  “Yeah. Pick-Up Group. I’m a little surprised to see you here. I thought you were crafting focused.”

  “I am, but not exclusively. I just wanted to test it out before I started learning anything else because if I didn’t like crafting then I wasn’t going to buy a dive helmet,” she explained. “But I love it, especially once my trainer let me use those tools you gave me instead of the junk at her shop! Oh, it’s going to give me so much practice for real life!”

  I grinned. “Well, you’re welcome. You don’t have to join us, but it’s not really my decision either way. Paula is the group leader, I’m just the guide.”

  I jumped up and started clapping, because Sophie had just completed the obstacle course from start to finish, successfully, without failing or falling once. “Great job [Sophie]! I knew you could do it!” I cheered.

  The others joined me immediately in our applause.

  ~~~~~~~~~

  The seamstress, it turned out, was a ballerina named Lucine. I don’t know if that was her real name or screen name. That’s how I heard it, but that might be she and/or Eternal Realms wanted me to hear her name. Like I said, privacy on ER gets weird sometimes. BrightenFlash, for example, only ever shared his screen name, but I knew that he had a dog named Deeohgee and that he lived in Memphis. But he didn’t want to share his real name, so even if he said it by accident , I still heard BrightenFlash.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  At my suggestion, she picked up a rapier and began training with the blade-dancer. I told her that if it didn’t feel right after an hour or two of practice, she should speak with the librarian and focusing on becoming a “motion mage,” or Mikael and becoming a “Backup-dancer”. Motion [Mages] were just [Mages] who focused on enhancing their spells with complex movements rather than incantations, whether those incantations are verbal or mental. “Backup-dancers” was just a joke, they were really just [Dancers], which were support characters every bit as valuable as [Bards]. However, they were somewhat less flexible, and they often needed to be in the thick of things in order for their buffs to activate upon the entire party. I advised her to spend some time on the obstacle course either way, as the only way that wouldn’t pay off is if she became an economic/lifestyle player only. She promised to heed my advice.

  The group split off into their own instances in order to more effectively burn towards their safety-limit. As I believe I’ve mentioned, syncing brains together is more taxing on the brain and the server than allowing a player their own instance. But the larger group you were in, the higher the strain.

  It also allowed for everyone to use the obstacle course at the same time, or for the various combat oriented players to receive instruction and advice from their respective trainers without interfering with each other’s training. Aside from sparring, which they could begin to do outside after they’d burned through their allotted time with the trainers and obstacle course.

  Katrine, Lucine’s friend who had convinced her to start playing, showed up looking for me after about an hour of real time while I was encouraging Sam on the obstacle course. She didn’t need me to cheer her on her archery practice, she was great at that. Although learning to shoot on the run would take some practice!

  “So, you’re the giga-expert or whatever that gave Lucine those treasures yesterday?” she asked as she synced up with us with a flash of green.

  “I was her [Greeter], yes, but I really wasn’t there for her. My cousin started playing yesterday and I was feeling generous,” I explained. “I gave the maximum gift to nine different players. She was the only one who expressed an interest in crafting, which allowed me to give her tools. If I gave anyone weapons, it would have counted against their account.”

  “Oh,” and my explanation seemed to put her off her stride. “Um, sorry. I got creeped on the other day and—”

  “Do you have ‘sexual content’ checked? That filters out a lot of the creeps,” I informed her.

  “Yeah, but they say that--”

  “Look, you either get it one way or the other. You either check it and put up with the creeps, or you uncheck it and you experience the game with the kid filters on. I have the filters on, and so does my cousin, and so do their friends.”

  “I’m sorry, this all turned out wrong,” she said, shaking her head in frustration. “I didn’t mean to come off all confrontational.”

  “Really?” Sam asked. “Because you sounded really confrontational just now.”

  “And I didn’t mean to. Look, I suck at this whole thing. I’m going to check that button, you’re right. I mean, I’ll have to toggle it if I want to go to [Certain Establishments] but the rest of the time it’s probably worth it to not have to worry about getting creeped on. Thanks, you might have saved me a lot of frustration.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Is that it?” I inquired.

  “No, I…” She huffed a little, looking uncomfortable. “Look, I’m a mage, okay? I haven’t attuned my avatar or anything yet, but I have most of the general spells they pass out in the library and a few that I saved up for over the last two weeks. Lucine said you might be looking for PUGs for your cousins group. I wanted to offer my services, in case you were taking them anywhere you might want an extra mage around. I don’t know what the group composition is or if it matters or anything. Lucine said you sounded really cool and experienced and everything and I thought – but then I fucked everything up. Sorry, I should have--”

  “Don’t worry about it too much. BrickFace made at least as bad of a first impression as you did,” I informed her. “He’s our tank, or at least he’s trying to be. But like I told your friend, it’s not really my call. This is my cousin’s group, not mine, so you’ll have to sync with [Paula] and ask her. Which means that you have a second chance to make a good first impression, this time with a girl.”

  “I’m [Paula]’s BFF since pre-school, by the way,” Sam interjected, having heard most of the exchange. “And I’m totally telling her that you thought [Luke] perved on your friend, but I’ll be doing it to tease him, not you. I’m a girl, I get it. [Paula] and I back each other up like this all the time. You just don’t have to do that with [Luke], he’s harmless. Hey, [Luke], go check on one of the boys for a minute, let me talk with [Katrine] without the testosterone stinking up the air.”

  Sighing, but figuring it was best for all involved to let the girls discuss the matter among themselves, I zoned in to check on Kevin’s progress with Master Storven.

  “So, [Certain Establishments]? I’ve heard of them, but …” I synced out partway through the questions, and I didn’t really need to know where the conversation was going. Parts of EternalRealms were decidedly adult oriented. I knew about them, but only second hand and from the forums. I wasn’t interested in them; I lacked the hormones or brain development that would have made me more than slightly curious about such features. My brain people were trying to change that for some reason I didn’t really understand.

  Kevin was doing pretty well, and I picked up a spear to spar with him for a while. I could tell he was going to be an excellent melee DPS.